Nationalism and Being a Nation

1486 Words6 Pages
The feeling of belonging to a culture and sharing the same ideas is what a nationalist person could express about their feelings toward their nation. Believing in your state’s national identity is often looked at as a requirement to be a citizen of the state. Often, there are cases where there is more than one nation within a state, where there is more than one point of view battling to be heard as their own society. The following paper will discuss the issues of the nation, national identity and nationalism with in Canada and other nations. A family, it is a group of people functioning together who generally share the same morals, culture, language, religion and beliefs. A nation can be looked at as a family of people working to stay together as a functioning society or organization. Just as there are arguments within a family, there are arguments within nations. A nation as defined by An Introduction to government and politics by Mark O. Dickerson, Flanagan and O’Neill is “An identity shared by a large number of people based upon, but not reducible to, objective factors such as race, language, religion, customs, and government” (page 42). Given this definition, it is obvious that there are multiple forms of nations throughout the world. Examples of nations could range from something as simple as a ethnic nations, a nation who’s national identity depend on race, language and religion, to a civic nations, a nation who’s identity depend on acceptance of the political order (Dickerson, Flanagan, O’Neill 44). A prime example of an ethnic nation would be Israel and a civic nation would be USA. You can see how the two societies differ, not only in government but also in independence. No matter the state, the governing nation is often looked at as the dominant nation of the state. Nations can exist without a state but the fight for their voice, rights and freedoms are

More about Nationalism and Being a Nation

Open Document